Author: azeeadmin

After two years operating in stealth, Mint .com founder Aaron Patzer’s new startup Vital Software is open for business.

Patzer made the announcement Wednesday while on the Next Stage at Disrupt SF.

Patzer’s company, which he co-founded with Dr. Justin Schrager of Emory University, is an enterprise software business that aims to make emergency rooms visits easier and more efficient for patients and doctors. The company is tackling the ER experience first and sees opportunity for the software in a hospital or health care facility, Patzer said.

“It’s a terrible experience, and not just because of the emergency,” Patzer said while on stage.

The software features an easy patient check-in system and uses AI natural language processing to find out more from the incoming patient. The system is dynamic, meaning it can ask follow up questions to the incoming patient to gather more information. By the time nurses see the patient, they’re already equipped with the information they need. The software also provides updates to the patient, such as possible wait times.

The idea is to give doctors and nurses software that is useable, Patzer said, noting that software found in hospitals is outdated. “It’s literally Windows 98 software.”

The company is self-funded, although Patzer noted off stage that they plan to raise funds next year. The company has one customer, a large hospital system he couldn’t name, that is now trialing the software.

In his view, software is constant need for disruption. His timeline: about every 10 years. That just happens to put Mint.com, he said, in a spot ripe disruption.

Google announced Wednesday the launch of its new “Dataset Search” to help scientists and data journalists alike sift through the data-drenched web easier and quickly find stories between the numbers.

Traditionally, datasets are spread far and wide across individual research websites, institutions like NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — and even data-driven publications like ProPublica. With Dataset Search, Google is aiming to adapt its Google Scholar search scheme to help data geeks and researchers sift through this data in a single search bar.

Google outlined guidelines for dataset providers that will help the search giant and others more easily identify its content and smoothly redirect that information to researchers searching for it. The approach is based on an open-source standard laid out by the collaborative data community Schema and asks data providers to include information on who created the dataset, how it was collected, when it was published and under what terms the data can be used.

This new search function is the second part of an initiative to increase the visibility and access to data through search, and follows a development earlier this year for standard search that specifically aimed to help data journalists more easily discover data.

Cancer almost killed the acquisition of video workout startup FitStar and its co-founder Mike Maser, who’s just become the CEO of the #1 fasting app Zero. It was a dream that turned into a nightmare.

Fitbit came right out and said they wanted to buy the True Ventures-funded company. “But even in that meeting, I felt pretty ill” Maser tells me. At first he thought the weird temperature fluctuations, swollen glands, and tiredness were just normal wear and tear from running a startup. A week later he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He was terrified that the disease could derail the acquisition.

“I was very scared they were going to pull out. I would have understood if they said that ‘you’re part of the reason we’re buying this’ but they were supportive. They all stood behind me” Maser recalls. “I signed the term sheet from my hospital bed during chemo. Fitbit allowed me an immediate leave of absence to get my stem cell treatment.”

Maser was determined to do everything he could to maximize his chances of beating cancer. That’s when he came across research of Dr. Valter Longo that purported that fasting could make chemotherapy more effective with fewer side effects. Mice that fasted during chemo saw their healthy cells go into a protective mode while cancer cells remained exposed to the treatment. Maser began the practice of not eating for stints of around 16 hours and believes that contributed to him being declared cancer free after just two of his six scheduled rounds of chemo. “I’ve been in remission ever since. I became very much a believer in fasting.”

That made him the perfect person to lead Zero. The fasting app lets people choose from popular fasting methods or create their own, set goals, and track their will power to avoid food. Digg founder Kevin Rose started it in late 2016 after getting into fasting when he heard Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman used the practice to shed weight. It’s become the top app in the space with over 8 million fasts tracked even as Rose’s attention has drifted to his meditation app Oak and becoming an investor at True Ventures. But all the while, he’d been friends with Maser for 18 years.

When Maser left Fitbit last year, he envisioned building his own app for fasting.  But after some conversations with Rose, they figured out “a win for both of us. I could take Zero to the next level while Kevin could give his undivided attention to both True Ventures and Oak. The lightbulb went off” Maser explains.

So today, Maser announced he’s become Zero’s CEO and it’s raised a $1.2 million seed round led by Rose’s True Ventures, whose Tony Conrad will join the board, Trinity Ventures, NFL legend Tony Gonzales, and Maser’s brother from Sutter Health Dr. Ben Maser are joining the round too.

With the new cash, the plan is to make streamlined but bare-bones Zero app into a fasting educational guide as well as an eating tracker. The startup wants to be able to teach people about the benefits of temporarily ditching food, intelligently recommend whether 13 hour, 16 hour, or another fasting regimen is best for users depending on their health goals, and provide guidance to keep people motivated when their craving a bite.

In the meantime, Zero today launches its Apple Watch app, which users have been aggressively requesting. Being able to easily key in the starts and ends to fasts will help Zero compete with BodyFast’s wider range of programs and LIFE’s social-focused app that pairs you with fellow fasters.

Long-term, Zero hopes to legitimize fasting and help the practice become more recognized for clinical applications. The research data is still a bit thin, and those interested in fasting should always consult a doctor first. Propelling more explicit human trials about how fasting impacts well-being could further fuel Zero. But given the epidemic of obesity, the increasing convenience of food delivery, and our screen-based lifestyles, any technology that helps us eat less deserves a shot.

E-cigarette maker Juul plans to use technology like user authentication and a tool set for tracking e-cigarette usage to help people quit its product, according to Juul’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer James Monsees, who spoke this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt about how the company is responding to the FDA’s crackdown on e-cigarette sales to minors and other issues.

He largely seemed to believe that all adult-use products will make their way to some portion of young adults and teens – like alcohol or cannabis, for example – and e-cigarettes are just another example of this trend.

“This is a problem that there’s never been a solution to,” he said, speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 event, “but we’re changing the nature of this universe.”

The company says its plan to curb youth adoption of Juul devices will involve technology and education. And it plans to give Juul owners more control over their usage, as well.

A new “connected” device Juul plans to introduce in 2019, pending FDA approval in the U.S., will utilize authentication technology to verify the device’s owner.

When a consumer first uses this device, they’ll be asked to connect it to their phone, which will allow them to keep their Juul from being used by others and view their usage.

The usage-tracking features will allow consumers to dictate how they want to use the Juul product.

“If a consumer wants to quit our product, they can,” said Monsees. “We will give them the toolset to do that in the smoothest possible way.”

For instance, a Juul user could indicate their goal is to drop their usage by 20% over the next two weeks, and the software will help guide them to do so.

“There will be a machine learning algorithm that’s going to smooth that out for you, so that you don’t even really have to think about it you request it. But we make it as easy for you as possible, Monsees claimed.

The new device will also allow consumers to opt into a new “youth prevention feature set” which will keep the device paired to its owner. Your smartphone will verify the Juul device is near you, as determined by your phone’s proximity.

“So if I drop my Juul in this chair and I walk away, and the next [person who] comes up is 12 years old…they’re not going to be able to use the product,” Monsees said.

But when the original user returns, with their phone, it will seamlessly work without any extra steps.

In addition, the company says it will invest in a $30 million initiative focused on educating the public on e-cigarettes and responsible adult use.

“Part of that is a curriculum to go into high schools and middle schools to help teachers teach students about the dangers of nicotine,” Monsees said.

Of course, technology features are only a partial solution to the larger problem of keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of teens.

While some teens will always go after adult-use products, Juul and others may need to adjust the way their devices are marketed and sold. For example, they may need to be sold in a more controlled fashion, and not on places like eBay where any person could snatch them up.

These companies are also heavily criticized for the youth-appealing, candy-like flavors offered. But that’s a tricky point, because adults also like these options.

The longer-term plan, Monsees said, is to leverage technology to give people control over their usage and help them make informed choices.

“The first part of this mission was to make a product that can dethrone cigarettes that can ultimately be more controllable and better in every measurable way. But that can’t be the end state of this company,” he said. “We cannot be holding people hostage, so to speak, and nor should anyone feel that way – the way that they may have felt with cigarettes in the past.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unity CEO John Riccitiello came to TechCrunch Disrupt SF to give everyone an update on the world’s most popular game engine. You might not be aware that most of the games you’re playing, especially mobile games, are built using Unity.

For those not familiar with game engines, Riccitiello started by describing game engines very clearly. Back in the days, “[game developers] would write out a game program that had lots of art assets, lots of animation, lots of sounds. But they also had to write a rendering engine, to write a system for animations, to write a system for sound, to write a system for physics,” he said.

And when you wanted to port your game to another platform, you basically had to start over. Unity works on 30 platforms, including Windows, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Oculus Rift, etc. Unity competes with Epic’s Unreal Engine, the game engine behind Fortnite and many games on the PS4 and Xbox One.

There are also less popular game engines from Valve, Amazon and others. The biggest game developers behind AAA franchises (think Battlefield or Assassin’s Creed) have their own in-house engines.

But it’s clear that Unity has captured a huge chunk of the market. According to Riccitiello, every month, people download 2 billion copies of Unity games. People tried at least one Unity game on over 3 billion devices.

In the past, Unity said that half of mobile games run on Unity. But it turns out Unity now also powers a lot of games on gaming consoles and computers.

“It's pretty much half of all games period. We have different market shares, depending on the platform. But more than half of all mobile games built for there are built in Unity. More than 60 to 70 percent — depending on the platform — of everything built for machines for virtual reality or augmented reality or any of the XR platforms are built in Unity,” Riccitiello told interviewer Lucas Matney. “And then, about a little over half of all the games built for Nintendo's platforms are built in Unity, a little bit less than that for Xbox and Sony. But in aggregate it's more than half.”

One of the reasons why Unity became so successful is that its pricing structure is developer-friendly. Game companies don’t have to give a cut of their revenue to Unity, they pay Unity per seat on a subscription basis. Other companies sometimes ask you to sign a revenue-sharing deal to use their engine.

Even more important than numbers, Riccitiello thinks that Unity is all about enabling creators by giving them the right tools.

“What powers Unity is a simple philosophy, which is the world is a better place with more creators,” he said. “We drive ourselves to put the most powerful tools possible in the hands of creators, small and large so they can realize their dreams.”

Roblox, which allows kids to create 3D worlds and games, has raised an additional $150 million in funding.

The company didn’t disclose its valuation in the announcement, but a source with knowledge of the deal told us that it valued Roblox at more than $2.5 billion — the price that Microsoft paid to acquire Minecraft four years ago.

“This is a big year for us that fortifies the dream,” said co-founder and CEO David Baszucki .

Earlier this year, Roblox announced that it had become cash-flow positive, and Baszucki told me the company remains “extremely profitable.” So why raise more money?

“First and foremost, the reason to fundraise is to have a war chest, to have a buffer, to have the opportunity to do acquisitions, to have a strong balance sheet as we grow internationally,” he said.

In order to support that growth, Baszucki said Roblox will be opening offices in some regions like China (“most likely with a partner that hasn’t been announced yet”), but it also requires building out infrastructure like local language and local payment support.

Roblox has now raised a total of $185 million in equity funding. The new round was led by Greylock Partners and Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors Altos Ventures, Index Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners and others.

Greylock’s David Sze has had big successes in both gaming and social media, having backed Facebook, LinkedIn, SGN and others. But he said Roblox is the first company he’s seen to “unify those two together on a platform in a magical kind of way.”

Apparently, Sze has known Baszucki for a long time — their kids went to the same school, and Sze remembered Baszucki bringing an early version of Roblox to the science fair. Gaming companies can be a risky investment, because their business relies on creating new hits, but Sze said Roblox is different.

“They aren’t making the games,” Sze said. “They’re letting the long tail of developers develop all the games on the platform, they’re let users decide what the successes are. It’s much more like a YouTube or much more like an Apple with the App Store.”

In a blog post about the funding, Sze even suggested that some of the next big gaming franchises could emerge from the Roblox platform, a prediction he repeated in our interview

“I’d be surprised if there aren’t some huge, high quality games that aren’t originated on Roblox in the next three-to-five years,” he said.

Roblox says it now has more than 70 million monthly active users, with more than 4 million creators who have built more than 40 million-plus experiences.

Of course, having a big platform with lots of user-generated content also creates risks — as illustrated in a recent incident where characters mimed gang raping a young girl’s avatar. (Roblox said a single server had been hacked, allowing users to upload code that violated the company’s rules.)

Asked whether these risks gave him any pause, Sze said, “User protection, user safety, all the aspects of having of having youth on your platform, it takes those things extremely seriously.”

“Are we perfect? No,” he said. “But I can tell you from inside the company that it’s an incredibly high priority. They’ve already done lots of things to help protect and make the user experience the best, and they have a list of stuff that they’re already working on.”

I’ll be interviewing Baszucki on-stage at Disrupt SF this afternoon, so stay tuned to TechCrunch (or come on out to the event!) for more on the funding and his future plans.

This story has been updated with the corrected amount for Roblox’s total funding.

The crypto market is down significantly today, practically across the board of all coins, following a report that claims Goldman Sachs has backed down on plans to start a dedicated cryptocurrency trading desk.

Bitcoin is down over five percent in the last 24 hours, but ‘altcoins’ have been hit harder. Ethereum (down 14 percent), XRP (down 13 percent), EOS (down 16 percent) and Litecoin (down 11 percent) are seeing bigger drops, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com.

Business Insider reported this week that Goldman has backed down on its aspiration to enter crypto trading due to continued uncertainty around regulation. That’s according to sources, although it does appear that the bank is holding off making a full-on commitment to crypto.

“At this point, we have not reached a conclusion on the scope of our digital asset offering,” a Goldman spokesperson told Reuters in a statement.

Added to that, there may also be some concern around a Reuters reported that claims the EU is looking into regulating crypto. The organization is said to be preparing a report that proposes regulation of crypto exchanges and ICOs.

Goldman has never gone public with its intention but reports first surfaced of its plans back in December 2017. That period was one of the peaks for crypto. During a bull run in December and January, the value of Bitcoin touched almost $20,000, that’s a record high and significantly higher than today’s price of just under $7,000.

So, in addition to regulatory concerns, the fact is that there is ongoing uncertainty around Bitcoin and the crypto more generally from an investment perspective. While it is worth noting that, counter to that, many in the industry believe price stability has many benefits because it allows a stronger focus on technology and product, it is clearly a problem for banks like Goldman which are ultimately focused on making money.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

This morning at TechCrunch SF 2018, Founders Fund partner Cyan Banister shared her inspirational journey from a homeless teen at the age of 15 to now a venture capitalist who’s invested in startups like Uber, Thumbtack, SpaceX, Postmates, EShares, Affirm and Niantic.

Banister spoke this morning at Disrupt about the handful of values she cites as key to making the transition from the streets to VC investing. These included incrementalism – meaning focusing on the next step, whether that’s getting the next meal or shower, for example – as well as individualism, mentorship and technology, and endless curiosity.

She credits being obsessed with making more money – capitalism – as being what eventually saved her life. She was always focused on getting to the next step – getting that next meal, getting a shower, getting a job, then learning new skills.

Banister began to see all this as a game, and each step was a form of “leveling up.”

Getting insight and advice through from tech mentors she encountered was another turning point in her life, Banister says.

Learning to use computers, get online and eventually, write code gave her access to the internet, hacker culture, and then, entry-level tech work.

“Suddenly, my brain was fully engaged for the first time in my life,” she says.

By taking initiative at work in unconventional ways, she was fortunate to not be fired for not following the rules, but rather encouraged to explore her creativity. She received a promotion that allowed her to learn about Linux, BSD how the Internet actually works, and how to set up routers DNS servers email servers over the next two years.

And she did all this as a high school dropout, who never went to college.

After moving to San Francisco and working at a startup, Banister earned a windfall after an exit to Cisco. This, she used to make investments in other up-and-coming tech companies.

“My first angel check went into SpaceX. I was terrified but it was exciting…I became addicted,” she says.

Her savvy investments got her an invite to join Founders Fund, as a partner.

“I have a chance to play in a new arena and stretch myself intellectually, ” Banister says.

When asked how she did it, she responded, “I can only tell you that I was endlessly curious I surrounded myself with people smarter and more capable than me. I played the game every day, I still do.”

 

Beth Seidenberg, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins since 2005, has taken the wraps off her new fund, Westlake Village BioPartners.

The Los Angeles-based firm has raised $320 million to incubate and invest in early-stage life sciences companies — Seidenberg’s specialty.

A spokesperson for Westlake Village confirmed to TechCrunch this morning that she is in the process of “transitioning” out of Kleiner Perkins.

Seidenberg has been one of the most prominent female partners at the firm, as well as a leading biotech investor in Silicon Valley. She has incubated and served on the boards of 3-V Biosciences, Atara, Breathe Technologies, Epizyme, ExpansionRx, FLX, Hixme, Kinsa and more, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Kleiner Perkins COO Scott Ryles has also joined Westlake Village as its COO. And in January, Sean Harper, executive vice president and head of R&D at Amgen, will join the firm. Seidenberg previously served as the chief medical officer and head of global development at Amgen.

“This was the ideal time – both in my role at Kleiner Perkins and given the explosive growth of breakthroughs in science and medicine – to pursue my passion for life sciences and launch a fund with such an exceptional team with whom I’ve worked closely in prior roles,” Seidenberg said in a statement. “Sean and I have known each other for more than 20 years and bring unique insights and expertise from our time in the drug discovery and development industry, providing the perfect shared history upon which to build Westlake.”

We don’t know for sure what spurred her exit, but it’s likely she wanted the freedom to close more deals in the life sciences sector. Big-name VC firms like Kleiner have established rules around how many investments a partner can make in a given year, which can be limiting for an investor like Seidenberg. On top of that, global VC investment in biotech is off the rails this year, with roughly $11 billion invested so far in 2018, according to PitchBook.

Seidenberg is not the first Kleiner Perkins investor to part ways with the firm in favor of managing their own fund. Both Aileen Lee and Trae Vassallo have kicked off their own efforts in recent years. Lee with Cowboy Ventures and Vassallo with Defy Ventures.

 

Factual announced this morning that it has raised $42 million in new funding.

The company launched in 2009 and now provides location data to customers like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. And it’s still adding new capabilities, like the ability for advertisers to measure whether their campaigns drove in-store visits.

Founder and CEO Gil Elbaz said that there’s now a big opportunity and a big threat around location data.

“The opportunity is, the world is reinventing around AI and data science,” he said. “The threat is that duopoly — Google, Facebook and perhaps add an Amazon. [Other] companies are looking for the right partners to augment their first-party data. That trend started in the U.S. and now it’s aggressively moving beyond.”

Factual raised the new funding, in large part, to fund that growth beyond the United States, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Elbaz said that even without any local employees, the company saw sales from the region triple last year, making it Factual’s fastest-growing geography.

Now, the company is hiring a team in Asia — starting with Chris Pattinson, a former Grapeshot executive who will lead Factual’s Asian headquarters in Singapore.

Factual has now raised $104 million in total funding. The new round comes from Upfront Ventures, Felicis Ventures and others. Elbaz explained that this was a party round, without a lead investor.

“It was easy, for one thing,” he said. “It didn’t take up a lot of time, I didn’t have to go look for a lead, I could focus my efforts on growing the business.”

In addition to geographic expansion, Elbaz said the money will allow Factual to invest in sales and marketing, and to move into new industries like out-of-home advertising and connected TV.